Visual Hallucinations Are a Normal Grief Reaction 550
Hugh Pickens writes "Vaughn Bell has written an interesting essay at Scientific American about grief hallucinations. This phenomenon is a normal reaction to bereavement that is rarely discussed, although researchers now know that hallucinations are more likely during times of stress. Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the point where feeling the presence of the deceased is the norm rather than the exception. A study by Agneta Grimby at the University of Goteborg found that over 80 percent of elderly people experience hallucinations associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement, as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved's passing. It's not unusual for people who have lost a partner to clearly see or hear the person about the house, and sometimes even converse with them at length. 'Despite the fact that hallucinations are one of the most common reactions to loss, they have barely been investigated and we know little more about them. Like sorrow itself, we seem a little uncomfortable with it, unwilling to broach the subject,' writes Bell. 'We often fall back on the cultural catch all of the "ghost" while the reality is, in many ways, more profound.' "
And yet.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet, there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy...
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Good point.
Re:And yet.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And yet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like sorrow itself, we seem a little uncomfortable with it, unwilling to broach the subject,' writes Bell. 'We often fall back on the cultural catch all of the "ghost" while the reality is, in many ways, more profound.' "
I think you may be inadvertently particlaly correct. I believe there are both more and less things here on Earth than we think. Less ghosts and spirits, more real things like elbowed squid and shrimp that breathe methane and live in 500 C thermal vents.
Truthfully though, I think the reason people are uncomfortable to research it is who wants to tell the 70 year old woman that the conversation she had last night with her dead husband that has now brought her some peace was a hallucination/dream?
Besides, the researchers may well find themselves on the other end of that hallucination.
Re:And yet.... (Score:5, Funny)
Besides, the researchers may well find themselves on the other end of that hallucination.
I totally hate when the people I'm studying start hallucinating me.
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This happened to me when my best friend died. I was 18 and I had been good friends with him since I was 5. At the time I understood the situation in several ways. First I knew very well what lucid dreaming was and how profoundly real dreams can seem (it's a matter of attaining awareness/consciousness while you are dreaming). Second I had understood this situation to be a potential root for the near ubiquitous belief in zombies/ghosts/vampires, due to an armchair study of demonology. None of this information
Re:And yet.... (Score:4, Interesting)
My Paternal grandfather had died, and my grandmother was still kicking around 5 or 6 years later. I was dreaming one night that I was hanging out in the woods behind their house, when my grandfather came walking out of the woods and said to me, "It's time to call your grandmother."
Normal dream fare, but for some reason it woke me up and I stored that I should call her. So, the next day, I woke up, went about my day, and called my grandmother and had a nice conversattion with her, which was fortunate because she died that night.
I still have that walking stick in my office.
Being certain that such things are impossible is just as stupid as believing in them, imho. We are just a bunch of monkeys. There's far stuff more going on that we don't understand than there is stuff we've scratched the surface of.
You can smile and nod at me and think I'm a looney toon for thinking that the deceased may linger. I would be just as much in the right to smile and nod at you for thinking otherwise.
Neither of us knows.
Re:And yet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We dream all kinds of crazy things. Just because every now and then a coincidence happens doesn't really mean anything. It isn't science because it isn't repeatable. Now if every night your dreams could predict something real, then you might have something. Right now you just have a +5 interesting story.
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I had a similar experience. One detail that you mentioned grabbed my attention: it woke you up.
I had a dream in which my grandmother (by then confined to a wheelchair) came for a visit, was walking with braces and my aunts on either side, then stepped away from the braces, their arms, and walked into our house.
My dream woke me up; wide awake, clear, not at all groggy, and much earlier than usual. I knew she had passed. It was a peaceful sensation, somehow allowing me to skip the initial, painful stages of g
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Strange things happen all the time, and they don't have to all simply be misperception. Sure, our brains are great at making connections which aren't really there. But there also *countless* probability-defying examples of people's minds making connections which ARE there - but which they would have no possible way of knowing, if our brains are really "just meat".
After all, conscio
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I think you should read the first post in this thread again.
You mean the one which reads "Yet, there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."? What is that supposed to prove?
And also read up on the Rhine experiments, as only one example.
Said experiment's results have never been successfully replicated. When faced with that fact, the reasonable conclusion is that the experiment was flawed, not that ESP is real.
Strange things happen all the time, and they don't have to all simply be misperception.
Sure, they don't have to be. But there's no reason to think that it's anything else.
Sure, our brains are great at making connections which aren't really there. But there also *countless* probability-defying examples of people's minds making connections which ARE there - but which they would have no possible way of knowing, if our brains are really "just meat".
Name three documented examples.
After all, consciousness itself is a metaphysical phenomenon. It is generated by physical means, as far as we know; and it very well may not outlast our physical components. But it still is something that is more than merely matter; that in itself should tell you that other forms of more-than-matter are at least *possible*, if not probable.
I admit that it's possible. Now what? That has absolutely no
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Imagine that (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it's imagination, just misinterpretation. (Score:5, Insightful)
The human brain seems to be very good at making shortcuts to speed up processing.
So when I'm around my wife, my human brain assumes that the person I see is my wife (shoot, it even assumes the warmth next to me in bed is my wife, and that the person I'm talking to is my wife), and interprets it that way for me.
So in bereavement, suddenly you're deprived of the actual stimulus. But that doesn't mean that the brain is going to let those circuits sit idle. No... the moment any unknown stimulus comes in, it's going to try to match it to the "wife" circuit. And if the "wife" circuit triggers better than anything else, then that's what I'm going to see.
In other words, we don't see things as they are; we see them as we interpret them.
So I suspect that this is just a case of the bereaved person mistaking a cat streaking around the house for their spouse. Or a bird in the air, etc.
Which doesn't mean that I don't believe in the human soul, and heaven and hell. But I don't think this is it. There's a better, simpler explaination at hand, and one that matches my occasional experience even nowadays, when I'm not bereaved.
"Laura, is that you out there?" ... oh no, sorry. It's just my son's friend.
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I've noticed a similar effect learning foreign languages... when I came back from Japan, every conversation I half-heard in the background sounded like Japanese until I got close enough to make out what was being said. When I got back from Argentina, everything sounded Spanish.
Re:I doubt it's imagination, just misinterpretatio (Score:5, Funny)
The human brain seems to be very good at making shortcuts to speed up processing.
So when I'm around my wife, my human brain assumes that the person I see is my wife (shoot, it even assumes the warmth next to me in bed is my wife, and that the person I'm talking to is my wife), and interprets it that way for me.
If your brain was REALLY good at making shortcuts, it'd skip all that and use the only shortcut a married man needs: "Yes dear" ;-)
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Sometimes delusion masquerades as imagination.
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A couple of years later, after Dad died, he came by to see me and would have said something except that his mouth had been sewn shut.
Re:And yet.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, this statement:
'We often fall back on the cultural catch all of the "ghost" while the reality is, in many ways, more profound.' "
What could be more profound than the spirit of the deceased lingering?
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It seems pretty mundane to suppose that after going through the most fundamental transformation a person can possibly experience, they have nothing better to do than hang around their old family some more.
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Next thing you know those awful secularists will be claiming that anecdotal stories of "I saw Jesus three days after He died" represent something fundamentally normal about the human experience.
Groups of people don't hallucinate the same thing at the same time, and certain individuals weren't grieving very much at his passing (Saul of Tarsus, Thomas, James)
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Jesus was force sensitive, and in death, he became more powerful than they could possibly imagine.
What if.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What if.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's happening in your head, but why on earth should that mean it's not real?
Re:What if.. (Score:4, Funny)
who you gonna call?
Re:What if.. (Score:4, Funny)
Ooohh! Oohh! I know this one!
Batman! It's Batman, right? It's gotta be.
Re:What if.. (Score:4, Funny)
(I, for one, welcome our dead, elderly, overlords)
You voted for McCain, right?
Re:What if.. (Score:4, Funny)
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Demand for their pills and services goes down when they are competing with inner personal strength.
They have to make people crazy somehow. Exploiting their grief is one way.
Ghosts (Score:4, Insightful)
The dead only live on in people's memories.
Re:Ghosts (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing that the death of someone I loved has proved to me is that there are no ghosts, and certainly no afterlife.
How exactly did someone's death prove there is no afterlife? I can understand not believing in an afterlife, but how did someone you love's dying prove it?
Re:Ghosts (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ghosts (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing that the death of someone I loved has proved to me is that there are no ghosts, and certainly no afterlife.
How exactly did someone's death prove there is no afterlife? I can understand not believing in an afterlife, but how did someone you love's dying prove it?
Seems like a very subjective opinion, and no "proof" as such.
I can only assume he was referring to the fact that his grief caused him to feel that the person was still there (i.e. hallucinating), and this experience was resembling the "ghost" phenomenon to such an extent that he can see why people would think there are ghosts.
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Seems like a very subjective opinion, and no "proof" as such.
Subjectivism, on my Slashdot? It's more likely than you think.
Re:Ghosts (Score:4, Insightful)
Because belief in an afterlife didn't make him feel any better. Since that was in fact its major selling point, as an all purpose disaster recovery solution, he wisely decided not to renew the license after the incident.
People really need to understand that while religious solution providers have great marketing departments, by objective measures their systems leave a lot to be desired and often don't justify the TCO, or the inevitable lock in to the providers total solution suite.
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It isn't, actually. The source has been open for nearly two millennia, and numerous forks exist. Nowadays the legal issues have been settled too, so you are unlikely to be met by the Spanish Inquisition for starting a new one or compiling a custom kernel of beliefs for your personal use.
Just beware of malware [encycloped...matica.com] and ignore the nay-sayers [encycloped...matica.com].
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For a finite investment, you get an infinite return. You have a guaranteed return on your investment.
You don't know that. That's the whole point.
Religion still (in most cases) makes one a better person.
Arguable, in the sense that Santa Clause encourages kids to behave. I'd rather teach principles based on concern for yourself, others, and society than a the wrath of a whimsical god that certain people claim to have authority on.
Can't beat the peace and joy religion brings in times of suffering. Those without any hope for the future fare a lot worse than those with hope. Religion has a social value apart from its religious message.
Perhaps. Then again, it also encourages people to get sucked in by faith healers and the like.
For all the complaints about religion, participation is much more voluntary than participation in government.
Depends on the religion, time, and place. Many religions are dogmatic and have the concept of blasphemy.
As a believer, if I'm wrong about God's existence, I'll never know the difference. An atheist wrong about God's existence is in for a very rude awakening. In short, you risk a lot more through unbelief than belief.
This is just Pascal's Wager [wikipedia.org]. Been r
Re:Ghosts (Score:5, Funny)
How exactly did someone's death prove there is no afterlife? I can understand not believing in an afterlife, but how did someone you love's dying prove it?/
He postulated his epistemology a priori then pronounced it a posteriori posthumously.
Probably.
Re:Ghosts (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my current theories of consciousness is it's the result of the mind recursively simulating/predicting itself as part of simulating/predicting the universe, and peeking into the future of what it is going to think next. It's very useful for a creature to predict the world around it, including other creatures, and it often has to predict itself.
But even if that is the case why should it cause the phenomemon we (I presume it's "we" and not just me
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AFAIK so far there's no scientific theory to explain "self awareness"/"consciousness", and I suspect it's the very first observation all scientists make - observation of self. Why should there be such a phenomenon in the first place?
I don't know if it would be considered a "scientific" theory or not, but consciousness is often considered to be simply an emergent property of the complexity of the brain. Emergent properties are nothing special - the simple way to describe it is states of matter: A water molecule cannot take on properties like "solid" and "gaseous", but significant numbers of them can, and do.
An interesting illustration of the idea is presented in Verner Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep [wikipedia.org] . In it, some dog-like creatures
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Still doesn't explain why I am me.
Out of six billion people on the planet, and all the billions who have lived throughout history, exactly one of them gets this unique window on the world that I call "me".
There's no scientific explanation for it. Until somebody figures out a way to measure it or even to observe it in people other than themselves, there can't be.
This strange phenomenon is, as far as I can tell, the only reason for thinking that there might be more to the world than just physics. Even then it
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It is less surprising to me how the "car" works (though that is a wonder in itself, and also useful if we ever want to build better "car"s).
Try this: stare at a blank wall and don't think.
Your "car" is still working merrily and quietly in the background, but your "You" is still there, and you know it, whether or not your memory works or not.
So if you were
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Don't try to read too much into Godel's theorum. It panicked a lot of people at the time (there were actually logic classes cancelled at universities here and there), but all it really seems to imply is: in a sufficiantly rich fomal system there are statements that parse grammatically, but don't make sense.
There are many examples, but they mostly come down to "there's a village in Spain where the barber shaves every man who does not shave himself", in a formal language so you don't have the usual outs (e.g
Re:Ghosts (Score:4, Interesting)
The fallacy comes in when people start touting said non-existence as a proven fact when it's only based on our current understanding of science. Like this article itself - dismissing it all as hallucinations. Current science can't explain it, so it must be a hallucination.
But what if it's not?
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If it's not, we'll find out later- either all of us scientifically at some point in the future when our methods have improved, or individually in the no-as-distant future when we arrive there ourselves.
Re:Ghosts (Score:4, Insightful)
Insightful, my ass. Points 2&3 are the same for a start.
> 2) There're are no fact that could lead us to think after-life exists (from a scientifical point of view)
Er, no. This whole topic is exactly that. The fact that vast numbers of people think they are feeling/seeing/conversing with their loved ones after their death certainly could lead one to think that there *might* be an after-life. Frankly any other position is unscientific. If one is just going to assume that all these people *have* to be hallucinating, because the only alternative you can think of leads one to an "unscientific" possibility, you're not being more scientific - you just have blind faith in what you think of as "science".
A scientific approach is to question the theory, make predictions and test them. For instance, if the theory is that people's grief is leading them to hallucinate, then the more upset people are, the more likely they would be to hallucinate, this could be measured and tested, a strong correlation between level of grief and likeliness of hallucination would strengthen the theory, etc.
Disclaimer: I don't believe in life after death, but this argument stinks of smugness.
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Who is to say that living on in your memories is not a form of ghostliness? Its an unorthodox view, but I believe this is what the summary is getting at.
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One thing that my death has proved to me is that certainly there is afterlife.
Eh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, misfiring braincells are way more profound than the possibility of a life after death and all that it entails.
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Re:Eh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, plus, your perceptions are also highly influence by your expectations, both conscious and unconscious. I think that applies here too: if you've come to expect someone being around, your brain will "fill in the missing gaps" (similar in concept to a running-average algorithm).
In another context, that's why you can't tickle yourself: because your brain "expects" the feeling of your fingers, since you're also the one generating that touch. In order to successfully tickle yourself, you have to introduce a time lag: set up some device such that when you operate it, a few seconds later it your motions get transformed into a tickling motion against your skin.
Re:Eh (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I'm dead due to misfiring brain cells.
No no, you're pining for the fjords.
Morning (Score:5, Funny)
Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common
Yes, this is very common, and is usually attributed to the caffeine withdrawal symptoms prior to morning coffee.
Re:Morning (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Morning (Score:4, Insightful)
The illusion of being awake was so strong -- the cliche that we can tell the difference between reality and dreams is a crock -- that I refused to believe her until I had to rouse her for doing the same thing.
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"mourning coffee"
There, fixed it for you!
I think I have observed this! (Score:5, Interesting)
For several weeks after a beloved cat of mine died, I swear I saw him out of the corner of my eye a few times! Most of the "hallucinations" were brief glimpses, but one I particularly remember I turned a corner and swear I saw him sitting there. I even said involuntarily "Hi, Prince..." then realized after a few seconds that nothing was there. Pretty creepy, huh? After about a month or so I stopped "seeing" him around. So long, my friend.
Less complex explanation... (Score:5, Funny)
That's quite clearly just a simple glitch in the Matrix.
Re:I think I have observed this! (Score:5, Interesting)
I turned a corner and swear I saw him sitting there. I even said involuntarily "Hi, Prince..."
Stories like this make me wonder whether we actually hallucinate the presence of cats, maybe even people, all the time, and it's only when it happens after the cat has passed away that we think twice about such events and realise that they must have been hallucinations...
Peter
Re:I think I have observed this! (Score:4, Funny)
Ghost stories (Score:5, Interesting)
The mind is a wierd thing to live in. I've "seen a ghost" twice in my life. Both were wierd. Neither was explicable.
The first time my oldest was an infant and my youngest wasn't born. We lived in a funny shaped house by a railroad track (we were dirt poor). The (now ex) wife and I had just gone to bed, and both of us saw a thin, very pale woman with long black hair and wearing what looked like a "dressing gown"' from ages past walking past the bedroom door! We thought there was an intruder. We both jumped up, I looking for the intruder and she checking to make sure the baby was alright.
It was extremely strange that we would both have the same hallucination at the same time. We finally decided that we'd seen the ghost of a woman who'd been struck by a train.
The second time I saw a ghost I came to the conclusion that seeing ghosts isn't a hallucination or sight of a disembodied spirit but a wrinkle in the spacetime continuum. The girls were visiting the wife's family in Missouri and I had the house to myself. I was sitting on the toilet, and since I was alone I didn't bother shutting the bathroom door.
I looked up just as a woman wearing contemporary-looking clothing walked up to the door, startled out of her wits as if she'd seen a ghost, as was I, -- and then she vanished.
There is a lot about the physical world that we not only have never investigated, but never expected or suspected.
Re:Ghost stories (Score:5, Insightful)
same hallucination at the same time.
I am reminded of cases where people's story for court testimony can be changed by reinforcement of those around them.
Either that or an Arwen-Liv-Tyler-Ninja really did walk past your room.
Re:Ghost stories (Score:5, Funny)
I was sitting on the toilet, and since I was alone I didn't bother shutting the bathroom door.
I looked up just as a woman wearing contemporary-looking clothing walked up to the door, startled out of her wits as if she'd seen a ghost, as was I
So, in other words, it scared the shit out of you...
Re:I think I have observed this! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the same way a human brain seems wired to see recognizable patterns in random material, I think a part of us is also hard-wired to seek familiarity and anticipate familiar sights by "seeing" them before they actually appear. That's why it's so shocking (or even traumatizing) when you see the same sight your whole life, only to have it disappear or radically change one day. I remember one story from a New Yorker after 9-11 who said he occasionally still spotted the towers out of the corner of his eye because he was so used to them being there.
Most humans find comfort in the familiar. And when it's not there, it can be very hard for us to accept--and take even more time for the brain to adjust to that absence.
you did (Score:3, Funny)
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I really don't agree with this all being just a hallucination. I have had a close connection to several pets. Some that lived with me and some that no longer did. The first time I experienced this phenomenon, I was on vacation with the furry family kenneled and I had a dream that had a lot of dogs in it. It was a pleasant dream, not bad at all, but when I awoke, I had this overwhelming need to call the kennel and check on my pack. It turns out my elder dog had passed away that morning and they had just gott
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I can has cheeseburger?
Correction: 'i can haz cheezburger?'
Re:I think I have observed this! (Score:5, Funny)
You're all wrong.
i can haz 10 livs?
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It ties the whole room together!
In my case they were very vivid (Score:2, Funny)
But that's because the only time I ever lost a friend (you expect to lose grandparents) all the young folk she knew went and dropped acid. It's what she would have wanted...
Jesus. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trying to start a flamewar (seriously), but I wonder if this is what happened when Jesus' disciples reportedly met with him after his death.
Although that would require multiple people to have similar hallucinations at the same time, since some of the accounts describe Jesus meeting with groups of disciples after his death.
Couldn't this also mean (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they have MRIs of people while they are experiencing a hallucination like this? Something to show the brain is dreaming, and not simply observing?
By the same token, I suppose we can't really prove that there is an observation going on. I've had family members relate to me that they remember a sequence of events, in a very specific way. I remember the same events differently. Either we are people from different dimensions who have slipped between worlds to share this one, or we have altered our own memories to suit what we would have liked to happen. One of these is more consistent with current science. It doesn't guarantee that the other option won't be found to be possible at some point.
Re:Couldn't this also mean (Score:5, Funny)
Just because it happens frequently doesn't mean it is *not* supernatural in nature.
That's why I pray every day to our great Flying Spaghetti Monster so I can see his terrific, supernatural tentacles grabbing down everything where others just see "gravity".
Re:Couldn't this also mean (Score:4, Insightful)
You can believe anything you want (and anyone will have a hard time proving you're wrong, even if you really are). It's just a matter of choice. But if you want your claims to be heard (by me at least, a very skeptic person) you have to follow some more criteria. But that's just me.
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Absolutely. Why, in 46% of documented cases, energy inductance drain has been detected in the vicinity of dead bodies, decaying exponentially with time and oscillating about a void karma mean. And in 67.2% of such cases, inductance eddies were suggested by gathered data as having occurred before the obituarial event. Couple this evidence with well
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The supernatural does not exist [discovermagazine.com].
Read it....
Semantics.
Literally. You're arguing about definitions. The article you linked to does not in any way prove that the phenomena often called supernatural don't exist, rather it just argues that if they exist, they are natural, and therefore not actually "supernatural".
Re:what is the definition of supernatural anyway ? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with 99% of the so-called supernatural is that there's not the slightest damn bit of evidence to support new fields of study. There was a lab at Duke University for at least 20-30 years for the study of psi phenomenon like ESP, telepathy, etc. Now, granted, I'm sure they weren't the most highly funded department, but in all the time they were active they never found a damn thing. If these phenomenon were real, wouldn't you expect to see SOMETHING? And if you found solid evidence of some hitherto fantastic phenomenon, wouldn't you trumpet it from the rooftops even if mainstream scientists ignored you? Yet no good evidence seems to exist.
It's a very handy position for the fringe crowd: blame mainstream science for marginalizing your ideas, and if a real scientist does produce data contradicting your claims, just keep clamoring for more money and more research, regardless of how little support you may have for your claims.
This makes sense to me (Score:5, Insightful)
You've been living with someone for years, you develop a model of their behavior in your brain. With them there, this helps to predict where they are likely to be, what they said in that indistinct murmur from the other room, how they are likely to react when you say that you're late for the third time this week.
So this model is going to be still running even after they have gone. You "know" that your spouse will be in the living room watching "Strictly Come Dancing" because it's 7pm. So your mental model will fill them in, and as you walk into the room it will take a little time for the model to adjust. Is this the "corner of the eye" effect at work?
OK, so I'm not a clinical psychologist, not even close. But it seems a very plausible model to me.
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I felt his presence for quite some time though I never saw him.
Then again, someone that barely knew him DID see him. She came around a corner and saw him sitting there for a couple of seconds. Real surprise for her!
I'm not making any claims here -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -- but she certainly had no mental model to follow nor strong attachment that would lead you to expect her to hallucinate his presence.
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I've said this for years. You leave a you-shaped hole in the people around you when you die; and they in the people around them. Added up, it's a kind of immortality. After all "I" am not a collection of cells, I think of myself more as a collection of habits, behaviors, ideas and beliefs.
Re:This makes sense to me (Score:4, Interesting)
I would hear him whispering in his sleep, it would go on for hours.
Then he went away on a school trip and I could still hear the whispering.
Re:This makes sense to me (Score:4, Funny)
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Exactly. My dad passed away a little over three weeks ago and my mom swears up and down she has seen him. My dad had dialysis in a chair right across from their bed, so my mom naturally started seeing him in or around that chair. Though, to be fair, she's under a lot of stress and her potassium levels were pretty low for 2 weeks.
Phantom Limb Pain, Sensory Deprivation (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds to me like the social equivalent of phantom limb pain [wikipedia.org]: "My other half is gone, but I still feel his/her presence."
I'm also reminded of sensory deprivation [wikipedia.org] -- when deprived of normal sensory input, the mind generates hallucinatory sensations.
Barely been investigated? Well gee.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether these things should be legalized is another topic, but at least make it easier for researchers to do legitimate science with them. Just tell me where to sign up.
Hallucinations (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had one hallucination, without any grief or drugs. I think stress is enough.
I was kayaking nears rocks, surfing very high waves, lost my kayak, and spent 15 minutes in the surf, hitting rocks multiple times. I got out, retrieved my kayak, launched, and paddled to a place where I could relax... then I had a pretty long and elaborate hallucination.
It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival. I'm an atheist, and I cannot help but think that this is how religions get started.
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It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival.
Ok, don't leave us hanging. What were the sacrifices, and did you perform them?
not just death (Score:5, Interesting)
I observed this phenomenon with grief over a girlfriend. We broke up after four years together. Afterward, I kept seeing her out of the corner of my eye, and my heart would skip a beat. It was always someone else, though.
Another unusual visual phenomenon: when the grief was particularly overwhelming, I started seeing in black-and-white, or at least with muted perception of color.
Since then I have avoided this problem by always breaking up with a girl as soon as things start getting serious. Hey, it works.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ghosts (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, they're ghosts.
Love? (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing I never understand about certain religions and spiritual beliefs is this importance that's placed on love. Sure, love is a powerful force that we generally consider "good", but love can be quite dark and twisted at times, and certainly hate can easily be just as powerful in terms of what one will accomplish in the name of it, and heck, it can definitely be very rewarding, too.
Why does love get touted around on a pedestal like it's some miracle thing? Seems a little silly to me. Any emotion can be
Re:Love? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nor would I necessarily agree that love is the basis of all human society. I live in a big city where there are fairly consistent patterns of behavior which you'd consider polite and civil (folks hold doors for each other, say excuse me when they bump into someone, offer subway seats to the elderly or infirm, etc). I don't think this is due so much to some hidden wellspring of love for our common man as much as a desire to keep things running smoothly--I treat you with a certain amount of respect and politeness, and you do likewise. For all I care you might be thinking about how nice it would be to strangle me, but as long as you keep your behavior civil we can get along. It's more 'social contract' than 'love'.
Re:Eternal (Score:4, Funny)
Time and space is an illusion
Lunchtime doubly so
Re:simple (Score:5, Informative)
a human is also an entity and a form of energy, in addition to the body mass and the heat it generates.
No, it's not.
physically it should have been impossible for 20 of them to combine and create exponentially higher impact on their environment.
I can't even describe how incredibly wrong and stupid this statement is. By this definition termites must have some sort of "higher energy" (ever seen an African termite nest [branchy.com]?).
therefore, philosophically, according to conservation of energy
Good Christ, man. Now you're going to try to co-opt the laws of conservation of energy, despite clearly having no idea what you're talking about? Here, let me explain it to you:
The sun beams energy, in the form of radiation, to Earth.
Plants convert that radiation into chemical energy.
I eat that chemical energy.
I then expend said chemical energy welding a girder to a skyscraper.
Hey, look at that, I'm increasing the order of my local universe by utilizing energy provided to me by the sun. No magic needed.
this tells that when a human complex dies, there is some other form of energy released that equals everything that human complex did in his life minus his body mass and heat.
And that tells me that you're so desperate to believe that you'll survive after you're dead that you'll make up basically anything. You know, like Jesus did.
Let me make this simple: when you die, you're dead. Your body decomposes, and the various compounds that make up your corpse enter the food chain. That's it. So make the best of this life. It's the only one you get, and once it's done, it's *done*.
Re:AND it HAS to be hallucination (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrast this with what we currently consider pseudo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
then review the last 150 years.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And how, exactly, would one go about detecting a "ghost"? I doubt you could even define what that is, let alone what device/spectrum/way that you could even think of detecting it (read